Its been 2 weeks since the floods began and only today, after his lukewarm and somewhat unnecessary European tour, President Asif Ali Zardari came to see the devastation in person. T.V. footage wasn’t quite immediate enough, you see.
And though he came to visit, and the state run stations ran the footage, curiously the footage was shown without any sound. Perhaps, to run along with a media shut-down, President Zardari was loathe to air shouts and scream, curses directed against him.
In the meantime, the latest forecasts promise even more rain and more flooding further South. The rising costs and casualties in lives lost and livelihoods destroyed have opened up a new volley of cuts and counter-cuts between the U.S aid donors and Islamists organizations.
The U.S. now stands to make a big impression in Pakistan by the sheer country-wide publicity of the aid on offer, publicity that for once is not linked to unpopular policies. In its stead, Islamists organizations reaching more Pakistanis them most other humanitarian organizations are asking victims of the flood to refuse U.S. provided aid.